Protecting Homosexuality

As Rush Limbaugh has noted, Jerry Sandusky is a ‘gay guy.’ Who else would want to have sex with boys? Yet nary a word about homosexuality graced the pages of the recent Freeh report or almost any news story. Would Sandusky have been protected for all those years if Penn State had not been supportive of gay rights? This question is one of several not being asked: for instance, is Sandusky HIV+?; how many of his victims are currently HIV+?; and how many are engaging in homosexuality? The NCAA used the scandal to tax Pennsylvanians $60 million in fines and penalties, but did nothing to challenge the reigning academic mantra that homosexuality ought to be accepted and protected.

Did Coach Joe Paterno only worry about the football program, or was he also protecting poor ol’ Sandusky and the academic view of homosexuality? Since the victims’ lawyers are not fingering others, it does not seem likely that Sandusky was part of a ‘gay nest’ at Penn State, but the civil suits should settle that question. There is a disquieting report of (heterosexual) child molestation to the Pennsylvania child protective services that should have, but did not, trigger official concern and action back in 1986, action that might have later saved many more children. According to psychologist Jim Singer, “most of the same Pennsylvania government agencies that were outraged over the PSU scandal — Child Protective Services, the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office, and the Pennsylvania State Police — all ignored and buried his report of child molestation.”1

Now the tide has apparently turned, but has it really? A Philadelphia monsignor was given a three-to-six year prison sentence for allowing a priest suspected of sexual misconduct with a minor to continue to have contact with children (7/24/12). Will Penn State officials — including its former President — get the same treatment?

Conservatives are up in arms (and rightly so) that the mayors of Chicago and Boston have threatened that Chick Fil-A will not get to open in their cities. For when is it wrong to publicly condemn a habit that drives homosexuals to have sex with each other and with boys? Are these politicians — Chicago’s Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Alderman Proco “Joe” Moreno, and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino — so smart that they know more than either the wisdom of the Bible or the psychiatric community of the 1950s? Are their opinions so correct that they deserve to trump the constitutional right to do business in the U.S. regardless of one’s opinions or religion?

Unfortunately, the seeds of these liberal attitudes were sown a long time ago. Even Ronald Reagan — conservative hero that he was — was not immune to wrong-headed thinking when it came to homosexuality. In 1978, Reagan publicly opposed the Briggs ballot initiative in California that would have prevented schools from hiring homosexual teachers and would also have allowed schools to fire teachers that promoted homosexuality. Reagan wrote in an op-ed2 that September:

“Whatever else it is, homosexuality is not a contagious disease like the measles. Prevailing scientific opinion is that an individual’s sexuality is determined at a very early age and that a child’s teachers do not really influence this.”

Contrary to Reagan’s assertion, we do have (limited) direct information about whether homosexual teachers influence students to give homosexuality a go. As part of FRI’s nationwide study in 1983-84, the 17% who reported having a homosexual teacher were asked if the teacher had any influence on their trying homosexuality. Among men:

96% of current heterosexuals and 85% of current homosexuals said that the teacher had no impact on their trying homosexuality;

whereas 4% of heterosexuals and 15% of homosexuals said the teacher influenced them in this direction either ‘a little bit,’ ‘some,’ or ‘a lot.’

Also, 12% of the sample said their homosexual teacher made sexual advances toward them.

Among women:

97% of current heterosexuals and 86% of current lesbians said there was no influence,

but 3% of heterosexuals and 14% of lesbians said that they were influenced ‘a little bit,’ ‘some,’ or ‘a lot.’

In addition, 4% said their homosexual teacher made sexual advances toward them.

Notice that those who were gay or lesbian reported more frequently than did heterosexuals that a homosexual teacher influenced them to try homosexuality. How many of these were tilted toward ‘giving it a go’ and then it stuck?

Of course, the vast majority of both groups said their teacher had no influence on their sexual orientation. Just because a teacher uses drugs and says so, will every student run out and give them a try? Of course not, any more than whatever a teacher teaches is necessarily and always ‘learned.’ Teachers, as parents, have influence. But that influence is far from determinative.

Nevertheless, the empirical evidence that exists lines right up with traditional concerns about homosexuality and especially the influence of school leaders (teachers, coaches, etc.) upon kids.

Politicians (and all civic leaders) should be aware of their special responsibility to act upon evidence rather than their ‘gut feelings’ or what is expedient. Instead, they seem to almost universally follow the modern, ‘godless religion’ of psychiatry. Its priesthood not only gets to determine what attitudes are sins (e.g., mental disturbances), gets paid to ‘treat’ such sins, but usually also tries to get greater society to endorse its worldview — which currently includes stamping out ‘homophobia.’ Neither Joe Paterno or Ronald Reagan was apparently immune to the song of the psychiatric sirens.

Best Study of Effects of Gay Parents: Slammed for Wrong Conclusions

The homosexual movement, many professional associations, and the media assert that whether a parent engages in homosexuality is irrelevant: as long as the child is loved, it’s all good. Tradition stresses the character of parents (and their concern for their children’s welfare), exhibited by raising a child within marriage, instead of alone or in an informal union. Tradition also holds that the aberrant attitudes, behaviors, and associates of those who engage in either homosexuality, illegal drug use, or criminality often have more influence on how a child turns out than expressions of love or affirmation by their parents.

A month ago Mark Regnerus published the best single study to date of the psychological and social status of adults with a homosexual parent. Based on a random sample of about 15,000, his study reported results consistent with common sense — those raised in a traditional man-woman intact marriage did best, while those with a homosexual parent(s) were the:

most apt to say they were not exclusively heterosexual,

most apt to be on welfare,

least apt to be employed,

most apt to have gotten a sexually transmitted infection,

most apt to have recently thought of suicide,

most apt to report being raped,

most apt to test impulsive,

most apt to smoke,

most apt to report heavy TV viewing,

most apt to have been arrested,

most apt to have pled guilty to a crime,

most apt to score high on depression,

least apt to report being able to depend on others,

least apt to report having felt secure and safe in their family, and

most promiscuous.

Participants who had homosexual parents generally ranked more poorly on the other variables studied as well, even if they were not always ‘the worst.’

This study was ‘the best,’ because it used the largest sample of participants, those individuals were randomly chosen, and the survey instrument covered a lot of ground — asking about possible social as well as psychological effects of different home environments. It was not ‘perfect,’ but it was head and shoulders above any other study both in terms of numbers of adults with homosexual parents and methodological rigor. Most of the studies on homosexual parenting are shoddy in the extreme, using small, non-random samples of volunteer subjects, a few questions of interest, and usually finding ‘no statistically significant difference’ between homosexual and heterosexual parents due to a lack of statistical power (i.e., sensitivity).

So has Regnerus been lauded for such a well-done study? No, quite the opposite: he has been charged with all kinds of scientific malfeasance.

Homosexual activists upset with the study’s publication have demanded and gotten his employer (Univ of Texas at Austin) to formally investigate him and his study (even though the charges were launched by a homosexual journalist with no credible credentials and they did not specify anything that he might have done wrong). A post-publication review summarized in the Chronicle of Higher Education (July 26, 2012) highlights Darren Sherkat, a professor of sociology at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale who was assigned to do the review: “His assessment of the paper, in an interview, was concise: ‘It’s bull__t,’ he said.” [note: FRI edited Sherkat’s profanity, not so the esteemed Chronicle].

“Among the problems Sherkat identified is the paper’s definition of ‘lesbian mothers’ and ‘gay fathers’ — an aspect that has been the focus of much of the public criticism. A woman could be identified as a ‘lesbian mother’ in the study if she had had a relationship with another woman at any point after having a child, regardless of the brevity of that relationship and whether or not the two women raised the child as a couple. Sherkat said that fact alone in the paper should have ‘disqualified it immediately’ from being considered for publication.”

But since very few lesbian ‘mothers’ manage to stay together beyond 4 to 6 years, the instability found by Regnerus (as well as other researchers, including FRI) is part of the reason children of homosexuals do so poorly. Whether homosexual couples who are more stable make better parents is unknown — there are too few of them in any study to say. And it could be, as with lifespan, that the more ‘committed’ they are, the worse the outcomes for them and the children they raise.

Sally Ride: Dead at 61

Sally Ride, the first U.S. female astronaut, died this year at 61 of pancreatic cancer. Most women live until their 80s. Something strange afoot?

Ride was married to a fellow astronaut from 1982 to 1987. But it was just revealed she had a ‘long time lesbian relationship’ of 27 years. Do the math: her 27 year relationship with a professor of school psychology (and co-founder of Sally Ride’s company) means that she got into that relationship in 1985, smack in the middle of her marriage. It would appear that her childhood friend broke up her marriage.

And Sally may have paid with some of her lifespan. Our latest research into recent homosexual obituaries from San Francisco indicates that lesbians are dying on average around 60ish. Ride fits the pattern of lesbian deaths, but not that of married women’s deaths, which usually extend into the early-to-mid 80s.

Is this proof that homosexual activity leads to an early death? No, of course not. Had she stayed married, Sally Ride might have died at the same age and of the same malady. But, on average, her death fits a consistent pattern suggesting that homosexuality is associated with an early demise.